Wes Longstreet.
Almost an hour had passed when Dunc spotted the gray stallion picking its way daintily through the rocks at the bottom of the long slope. He came instantly alert, his shotgun at the ready. Then he thought, Why the hell didn't I bring a rifle? A shotgun's no good at this range!
But then the rider cupped his hands to his mouth and the mournful bark of the coyote hung on the still air. Dunc returned the call and thought, That's Cal Brunner. What does he think he's doin' this far from the cave?
He watched with vague interest as the big gray picked its way to the far side of the slope and disappeared among the trees. Dunc shrugged. Well, he guessed Cal Brunner could do as he pleased... so long as Ike didn't have any objections.
He sat on the rock again and waited, idle thoughts drifting in and out of his mind. He was bored.
Perhaps another hour had passed when the muffled sound of a rifle mushroomed gently in the still of the afternoon. Instantly Dunc was on his feet again, running in the direction of the sound. Then he thought, That shot was too far away. I can't do any good without a horse. He turned and ran back to where his little bay grazed in the sparse grass among the rocks.
He had to take a tortuous, twisting trail down the west side of the hill; plunging headlong down that incline would have been suicide. The shot probably meant nothing, he told himself. Probably it was Cal shooting game. Dunc swore as the little bay stumbled over the rocky trail. Goddamn it, why hadn't Cal warned the outpost if he was going hunting?
When he reached the shelf at, the bottom of the trail, he brought the bay up for a moment, scowling. Here, he thought, was just about where he had seen Cal. Dunc called out the barking signal. The hills were silent.
Dunc kneed the bay to the south, toward a heavy stand of trees, and called out again. There was no answer. He considered the possibility mat a posse might have penetrated this deep into the hills and Cal had run into it, but he dismissed that idea immediately. No posse could have got past the forward outposts without raising a commotion.
Dunc worried this in his mind for a moment. Maybe it was another kind of trouble; maybe Cal had had an accident of some kind. This idea worried him more than the possibility of a posse. Ike would sure be hell to live with if anything happened to that hotheaded brother of his.
After another short pause to orient himself, Dunc put the bay into the woods, beating a slow arc around the base of the hill, keeping in mind the direction from which the shot had come. He was about to call out again when he heard the scamper and clash of steel-shod hoofs on the rocks behind him, and through the woods Dunc glimpsed Ike Brunner's paint mare crashing through the trees toward the sound, and the gang leader's face was twisted and red with rage.
Instinctively Dunc held back, glad that Ike hadn't seen him. When the elder Brunner got that kind of look on his face, he was nobody to fool with. Maybe Ike has taken this as a personal thing, Dunc thought carefully. Maybe I'd better let him take care of it to suit himself.
As Dunc gentled the bay, he could still hear Ike's paint snorting and blowing, pushing through that stand of heavy timber as though it were so much underbrush. There's something queer about this, Dunc thought slowly. Where did Ike come from, anyway? He must have been up there on the hill at the time of the shot, and he sure didn't waste any time getting down there. And from the way he's riding, he must know exactly where he's heading.
Pondering on this, Dunc shook his head. If this was a personal matter, he wanted no part of it. But if it concerned the gang...
He decided that he had better take the chance and move along a little farther. Putting the bay over to the left, he picked up Ike's trail and followed it. It was a steady, treacherous downgrade now, and only after several minutes of riding did Dunc realize that Ike's trail was leading him straight for Mort Stringer's cabin.
Wait a minute, he thought. If Ike and Cal have a fuss with Stringer, that's none of my business.
Dunc was beginning to guess what the trouble might be. He knew Cal, and he had heard that Leah Stringer was a long way from being ugly. Dunc Lester, he told himself, the smartest thing you can do is turn right around and head back for the ridge.
But he didn't turn around. The more he thought about it, the less he liked it, and the more he hoped that he had figured it out all wrong. Getting Mort Stringer turned against them would be the worst thing that could happen. That old man could rile up the hills all the way to the Verdigris, if he ever got his dander up at them.
Cautiously Dunc urged his bay forward. Almost immediately he stopped, hearing Preacher Stringer's shrill, high-pitched voice ringing through the trees. Dunc tied the bay to a young sapling and cocked his head curiously. He was still too far away to tell what Stringer was worked up about, but he was sure preaching hell-fire to somebody!
Well, since I've come this far... Dunc reasoned. He pulled his shotgun from the saddle boot and moved forward on foot, alert as a mother doe, silent as an Indian.
He reached a small rise at the edge of the Stringer clearing. Lying on his belly behind some brush, he could see four of them, Mort and the girl, Ike and Cal. Cal was stretched out on his back, his good-looking face ugly with pain, and Ike was slashing at his brother's trousers with a pocketknife.
“That old bastard!” Cal whined. “He shot me! You hear me, Ike? He shot me!”
“Shut up,” Ike snarled coldly. “You're lucky I don't finish the job for him!”
Violently Ike ripped the leg from Cal's trousers, slashed it with his knife, forming a compress with one half of the rough material and a bandage with the other. He worked angrily and silently at bandaging his brother's leg, completely ignoring Mort Stringer's shouting. The girl, on her hands and knees a little behind her father, did not utter a sound. Dunc judged that she had been knocked to the ground, probably by Mort himself, for she shook her head dumbly and made no effort to get tip.
“He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword!” Mort Stringer ranted. Jabbing a bony finger at Ike as though it were a pistol, he screamed, “You're wastin' your time, Ike Brunner, for the wages of sin is death! Thus spoke the Lord, and you cannot thwart the will of the Lord! The black shadow of the Angel of Death falls over both of you! The curse of God is upon the name of Brunner and upon its followers!”
Ike glanced up in cold rage but did not speak. Dunc Lester, from his place in the underbrush, was slightly stunned by the steady flow of insane doggerel that came from Mort Stringer's mouth. Maybe Mort had been alone in
